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In this Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2012 photo, Haisla First Nation Chief Councillor Ellis Ross, right, laughs with Hereditary Chief Marilynn Furlan after he addressed the panel during the opening day of hearings for the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project in Kitamaat Village, British Columbia, Canada. Several hundred people gathered for hearings on whether a pipeline should be laid from the Alberta oil sands to the Pacific in order to deliver oil to Asia, chiefly energy-hungry China. The stakes are particularly high for the village of Kitamaat and its neighbors, because the pipeline would terminate here and a port would be built to handle 220 tankers a year and 525,000 barrels of oil a day. Ross used to work on whale-watching boats, and testified that the tanker port would go up just as marine life decimated by industrial pollution was making a comeback in his territory. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Darryl Dyck)
/ AP